This jock jam comes to us from the English band Republica, fronted by the lithesome Saffron, real name Samantha Sprackling. We're used to hearing it in 20-second intervals during sporting events when action is imminent, but it has a full set of lyrics that are rather intriguing. In the song, Saffron addresses a guy who sleeps too much and is always running off at the mouth. At the time, there weren't many young bands led by women, especially in the UK (the Scottish firebrand Shirley Manson led a group of Americans, Garbage), so she was making a statement.
In a
Songfacts interview with Saffron, she explained: "It was a broader sense, a collective sense of young women and girls growing up in the '90s, because the radio would not even listen to any female-fronted band that wrote their own songs. You had to fight so hard in a business that's very cutthroat and is predominantly male-dominated. So it was like a battle cry."
"You've got to keep bashing down these doors that keep closing on you until one opens," she added. "The energy behind it is about independence and confidence."
Republica is rooted in dance music, but their sound is more guitar-driven and their lyrics tell nuanced stories that aren't always cheerful. "Ready To Go" is a fist-pumper, for sure, but it has a deeper message and a dark side, heard when Saffron sings, "Abused, confused, always love the one that hurt ya."
The band released the singles "Out of This World" and "Bloke" before issuing "Ready To Go" as a single in 1996 and including it on their self-titled debut album. The UK release is a little slower, heavy on keyboards, with an intro that builds for 30 seconds before the drums come in. It stalled at #43 in April 1996.
The American version of "Ready To Go" gets to the action a lot faster, with just seven seconds before it blasts into the heavy guitar and drums. This version was the winner. Republica toured America to promote it, stopping at radio stations and playing small venues across the country. It gradually got added to playlists, and while it only peaked at #56 (in November 1996), it endured to become a '90s classic. This American mix was released in the UK in 1997, and the song rose to #13 that March. Different videos were made for each version of the song.
Unlike many British singers trying to connect with American listeners, Saffron never tried to hide her accent when she sang, so the line, "It's a crack" comes off sounding like "It's a crock." In America, "That's a crock" is a pretty common expression to indicate something fraudulent, but it isn't a specific saying in the UK, where the word "crock," on its own, can mean "lies" or "nonsense," but also "old" or "decrepit."
Republica charted with the follow-up, "Drop Dead Gorgeous," used in the movie Scream, but their second album, Speed Ballads, wasn't released in America because their label, Deconstruction, went through a restructuring. This, along with lineup changes, ground them to a halt and left Americans wondering what happened to the band. Speed Ballads includes a UK hit called "From Rush Hour With Love," but that wasn't enough to prop up the band, which called it quits a few years later. In 2008, they started recording and performing again with three original members: Saffron, Tim Dorney, and Johnny Glue (aka Johnny Male).
"Ready To Go" is included on Volume 3 of Jock Jams, a compilation of stadium stompers put together by ESPN. That album sold over a million copies in America, far more than the Republica album. The song is often used to pump up the crowd, most notably by the New York Rangers hockey team, which used it when they skated onto the ice.
The song has been used in many commercials over the years, but the most famous one came in 1998 for
the Mitsubishi Galant. The spot gave the song new life - it returned to playlists and album sales got a bump. These days, you'll hear the song in ads for casinos, theme parks, and anywhere else you might "go."
Republica's drummer was David Barbarossa, who brought a tribal sound to his former bands, Adam And The Ants and Bow Wow Wow. He was a strange fit for Republica, which used lots of electronic percussion. He left the group in 1997, forcing the band to fill a difficult position, which they staffed for a few years with Pete Riley.
"We didn't realize until we had to play the album live that we'd made the most difficult conundrum possible," Saffron told Songfacts. "Our tracks were 160 BPM, which is as fast as a techno record, and there aren't many live drummers that can play or sustain 160 BPM. So to present it live, we got multiple electronic channels going as well as live keyboards, live guitar, and obviously, live vocal, which is very, very fast and has loads of lyrics, so I got very out of breath."
Barbarossa is the only band member who didn't get a writing credit on "Ready To Go."
"Ready To Go" plays in the 1997 movie Vegas Vacation in a scene where Audrey Griswold cuts loose on the Vegas strip. The song also appears in the movies Get Real (1998) and Sugar & Spice (2001), and in the 2021 episode of Yellowjackets, "Bear Down."
During the coronavirus pandemic, many musicians did their part by livestreaming to fans, but Saffron of Republica put music on hold and took to the front lines as
a mental health worker. She even learned sign language so she could communicate with patients who are non-verbal.
"I just so enjoy meeting individuals who are different and finding out how they think and communicate," she told Songfacts. "I sometimes prefer to be around them because It's pure and it's the truth. You have to put yourself in their shoes so they can be able to express themselves like I've been able to express myself through my music."
